SBN Website Optimization:
Secondary Pages & Site Architecture Audit

Table of Contents

Overview

A full audit of savedbynature.org’s navigation and secondary pages reveals two compounding structural problems: a navigation architecture too complex for visitors to use effectively, and functional infrastructure that visitors cannot find because of where it is buried.

The site has no Contact page anywhere in its navigation. A fully functional e-commerce store and an active event calendar both exist — and both are hidden inside a secondary dropdown that most visitors would have no reason to open. Multiple pages serve content that their URLs do not describe, signalling to visitors and search engines alike that the site was not built with either audience in mind.

Navigation Architecture

Top-Level Structure

The top-level navigation contains five items: HOME, PROGRAMS, WHAT’S NEW?, GET INVOLVED, and ABOUT. There is no Contact option at any level of the navigation — not as a top-level item, not within any dropdown, and not within any of the five sections.

The two most prominent interactive elements in the header are the DONATE and MEMBERSHIP (optional) buttons in the top right corner — financial actions that appear before a visitor has engaged with any content.

The GET INVOLVED Dropdown

The GET INVOLVED dropdown contains six items: Donate, Membership, Volunteer, Corporate Matching, Donor-Advised Funds, and Sponsor. Five of the six are financial asks. The sixth — Volunteer — asks visitors to contribute their time. None of the six serve a visitor looking to participate in a program.

The label “GET INVOLVED” implies participation. The content delivers only financial and volunteer contribution options. For a visitor arriving with program-seeking intent, this dropdown offers nothing relevant.

The WHAT'S NEW? Dropdown

The WHAT’S NEW? dropdown contains three items: Calendar, Awards, and Shop.

Two of these — Calendar and Shop — are fully functional systems with genuine utility for visitors. A working event calendar and a complete e-commerce store are both accessible only through this dropdown. Neither is signalled by the label “WHAT’S NEW?” and neither would be found by a visitor who did not already know to look there.

The ABOUT Dropdown

The ABOUT dropdown contains four items: Our Story, Staff and Volunteers, Board, and Community Partners.

Buried Functional Systems

The Calendar

The calendar page at savedbynature.org/calendar is functional. It displays a standard monthly grid with real, populated events for July 2025. The entries visible in the screenshot include the 6th Annual Inclusive Nature Hike on July 13th, a Seniors Hike entry on July 16th, and an Alviso Adobe entry on July 19th.

This is operational infrastructure. Events are being added, dates are current, and the calendar renders correctly. It is accessible only via the WHAT’S NEW? dropdown — a navigation label that gives no indication a calendar exists within it.

A Widget Didn’t Load error is visible in the right sidebar, consistent with other pages across the site.

The Shop

The shop at savedbynature.org is a fully functional e-commerce store. Four products are visible in the screenshot: an SBN-branded T-shirt and three Bay Area nature guides. The checkout page shows a complete purchase flow with PayPal and Venmo express checkout options, a customer details form, delivery calculation, and a secure checkout indicator.

One discrepancy is visible between the two screenshots: the T-shirt is priced at $27.00 on the product listing page and $28.00 in the order summary on the checkout page.

The shop is accessible only via the WHAT’S NEW? dropdown — the same navigation label that contains the calendar and an Awards page. A visitor looking to purchase SBN merchandise or nature guides would have no obvious route to this page.

Missing Infrastructure

No Contact Page

A complete review of all five top-level navigation items and their dropdowns confirms that no Contact page exists anywhere on the site. The navigation contains no contact option — not as a standalone page, not embedded within ABOUT, and not within GET INVOLVED.

The only contact information on the entire site is a phone number and physical address in the site footer, presented as organizational credentials rather than as a participant or professional contact pathway.

Healthcare providers seeking to refer patients to the Seniors Hike for Health program, probation officers seeking reentry programming, social workers identifying youth outdoor programs, and community members wanting to ask a question before joining a hike all encounter the same outcome: no contact pathway exists.

URL-Content Mismatches

The URL savedbynature.org/copy-of-donate serves the Community Partners page. The URL describes a donation page duplicate; the content is an entirely different section of the site.

This mismatch creates two problems. For visitors, a URL that does not describe its content is disorienting — particularly for anyone who bookmarks pages, shares links, or returns to the site via browser history. For search engines, a URL signal and page content that contradict each other undermine how the page is indexed and how it ranks for relevant queries.

This is not an isolated instance. The Youth Environmental & Social Justice program page, documented in the Programs audit, was published at savedbynature.org/copy-of-outdoor-access-for-at-promise — another exposed staging URL serving live content.

Overall Assessment

Dimension	Assessment	Notes
Navigation Architecture	🔴 Poor	5 top-level items; no Contact; WHAT'S NEW? label obscures functional systems
Contact Infrastructure	🔴 Critical gap	No contact page exists anywhere in the site
Functional System Accessibility	🔴 Poor	Working calendar and e-commerce store buried under WHAT'S NEW?
URL-Content Consistency	🔴 Poor	Multiple confirmed mismatches between URL and page content
GET INVOLVED Structure	🟠 Misaligned	6 financial/volunteer options; zero program participation pathways
Technical Stability	🔴 Poor	Widget Didn't Load errors visible across multiple pages

The site’s navigation architecture creates a consistent pattern: functional systems that visitors need are inaccessible without prior knowledge of where to look, and the infrastructure that would convert visitor interest into action — a contact page, program enrollment pathways, visible calendar access — does not exist or cannot be found.

This audit reflects the observed state of savedbynature.org navigation and secondary pages as of July 2025. All findings are grounded in visual and structural review of the website at the time, and are captured in page screenshots. No third-party analytics data has been incorporated into this assessment.

SBN Website Optimization: Secondary Pages & Site Architecture Audit